It says on this forum I got third place, but there is no third place listed on the Level Champion Challenge Winners page and no ribbon on my profile page for the story. I'm not sure if I did or not.

Interesting. There's actually no 3rd place in beginners listed at all. I'll bet you did get 3rd place, but something happened with the official challenge results page. Unfortunately, that's a part of the site that pretty much can't be edited.